THE year was highlighted by massive cutbacks in production allocations, with Netflix, whose series are of dubious quality, the only streamer to keep up. The attack on writers continues and there is also a general ideological trend toward conformity (Russian, Chinese, Syrian and Iranian bad guys abound) that saps creativity and complexity.

Nevertheless, spanning the globe, there were enough series of interest to compile a list of the best culled from over 120 series watched this year.

The Gone — What lifts this New Zealand/Irish co-pro, set in New Zealand, above the standard “cop out of water” or “investigator returns home” series is the crossing of the cultures of the Gaelic male cop and his female Maori partner and the constant interplay between the two indigenous ways of life. 

They even point to a common foe as the Irish cop, plagued by an afflicted past, shares a spliff with a Maori community leader with both communing about their historical mutual oppressor, the “f***ing English” (Discovery +). 

Mr Bates vs The Post Office — Not only an exposé of a cold, calculating and ultimately irrational corporate system which the British power structure believed over the words of its local postmasters, trusted members of the community, this series, which brought some measure of justice at least momentarily to workers harassed to the point of suicide, also pointed to the larger mechanical and unfeeling attack on service workers which will only multiply as Elon Musk and the rest of Silicon Valley continues its assault under Trump. 

The Seed — This German/Norwegian series cuts back and forth between the world’s largest seed vault in Norway and the seat of European power in Brussels. In both, a corporate enterprise is trying to corner the market and conceal its malfeasance in nabbing the world’s food supply. 

Excellent relationship between a hardened German cop and his more in-touch-with nature Norwegian female partner as they discover the truth about an uncompromising corporate grab for power where one corrupt CEO is replaced by an even more corrupt one, all to keep the stockholders happy (Disney Plus).

Ammo — Another Norwegian series, this one about the inner workings and blatant corruption of an arms industry whose CEO, although promoting “weapons for peace,” is not above strangling his own wiser and more cautious relatives as he also participates in the cover-up of a company drone attack gone murderously awry. The series, quoting from the latest headlines, questions the “benevolent” presence of the French in Mali, site of the massacre, as the French military prepares to wreak havoc upon their being thrown out of the country. The lead character, hired by the company as a patsy is, ultimately, not a whistleblowing hero but one more compromised cog in this deadly machine. Convincing negative ending that suggests opposing these companies, who have helped bring the world to the brink of a possible nuclear war, is a long, hard uphill slog, but one essential to engage in (Apple TV). 

The Big Cigar — The continually surprising aspect of this series, based on a true story, about a successful ’70s Hollywood producer who takes it upon himself to defy the FBI by smuggling Black Panther leader Huey Newton, facing the bureau’s trumped-up charges, to Cuba is that the emphasis is not on the ‘70s Hollywood maven but rather remains solidly focused on Huey. Flashbacks reveal his helping to found the Panthers, his surviving assassination and his relationship with both a female supporter his own age and his younger lover. The villain, as the scene shifts to Mexico, is a Hippie undercover agent whose obsessional pursuit of Huey is not only his wanting to take down a strong black man but also his desire to put a revolutionary in jail (Apple TV+). 

After The Flood – British ITV series that outdid in its faster pace any series on the stodgy “all things to all people and hence nothing to anyone” BBC. Takes on the crucial climate question, a key one for Britain, the US east coast, and around the world, of a deluge as part of the global environmental catastrophe. The flooded town, named Waterside, must confront insurance policies which no longer will cover flood disasters and a supposed “eco-friendly” developer whose digging up the land for a high-priced housing complex contributes to the devastation. This criminality which ravages the community is seen through the eyes of a dogged older female police officer, new to the force and thus less corrupted (Prime Video). 

Dennis Broe is a television critic whose books include Birth of the Binge: Serial TV and The End of Leisure and a novelist whose latest novel The Dark Ages is about McCarthyite repression in Los Angeles in the 1950s.